Everpix: Fully Documented From Startup to Shutdown

[3things]

Thought this was interesting, Everpix was a photo storage app [web & mobile] that started up in 2011 and shut down late last year after running out of money. All their internal docs and data are up on Github and make for some interesting reading. Consumer surveys, paid traffic data, daily web traffic, app reviews, financials, VC responses...it's all there.

Full backstory: http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5...nd-death-inside-the-worlds-best-photo-startup

Everpix docs on Github: https://github.com/everpix/Everpix-Intelligence

Surprising how little web traffic they actually had, and just how much of their $2.3m funding got blown on salaries, consultants, PR [way over half]. All the while their free vs paid user conversions weren't high enough, and their AWS bills were growing.

Interesting stuff anyway.

PS wasn't really sure where to post this so mods feel free to move as appropriate.

 

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[RHL]

Speed+. Process documents are always worth a look, even if they're for bad process.

 

[nzerinto]

Very interesting. The financial breakdown says it all really, and the VC feedback (of the ones who passed) is gold.
Thanks for sharing.

Does this sort of info get posted fairly frequently? I've never come across it or heard about information like this being made publicly available...

 

[3things]

Yeah the VC feedback was a good read, and with the benefit of hindsight very accurate. Looked to me like it was pretty apparent from very early on that the free-paid member conversion rate wasn't quite where it needed to be, and as they scaled up that just didn't change - so the monthly subs were always just paying the AWS bill but not covering the salaries/other fixed costs.

There's probably some point that sufficient scale would conquer this [assuming your fixed costs stayed about where they were] I guess but of course that needs increasingly more money to keep you going for another X years as your AWS costs increase consistently with user numbers, and assumes some kind of miraculous user acquisition along the way, your free-paid conv. rate stays stable or improves...

Some good detailed insight into a failed startup though...one of those kind of 'car crash' type things where you can't stop looking. Despite $2.3m in funding, and a decent problem solving idea with great tech execution [the app etc], the underlying model just didn't quite work. The traffic stats were also interesting in a sad way - the day they announced their closure was the highest amount of website visitors by an absolute mile. :/

 

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